For most of the world, St. Patrick’s Day is mostly known as the day when people dress in green and drink beer in Irish pubs. But for marketers, celebrating this Irish saint can be a great opportunity to expose their audience to unique campaigns.
Here are the four best St Patrick’s Day marketing ideas you should consider using for this year’s marketing strategy. Plus, how the lucky charm of St. Patrick’s Day worked for some of the leading brands and their 10 most successful marketing campaigns.
Four best ideas for St. Patrick’s Day promotion
If you’re still thinking about what kind of St. Patrick’s Day promotion to start at your company, here are some ideas that might spark your creativity:
- Organize a St. Patrick’s Day event
- Think of St. Paddy’s Day outfits
- Throw a St. Patrick’s Day sale
- Prepare some St Patrick’s Day recipes
1. Organize a St. Patrick’s Day event
St. Patrick’s Day celebrations are about people coming together and marking this special day. And throwing a fun in-store event for your target audience might be a great St. Patrick’s Day marketing idea.
Whether promoting a certain beverage, a tourist destination, or some other product, throwing a fun event can be a real winner!
2. Think of St. Paddy’s Day outfits
Wearing green is one of the main symbols of St. Patrick’s Day. Whether you’d like to stimulate your audience to simply wear green, or to dress in a specific outfit, creating St. Patrick’s Day outfits can be a great success on social media.
User-generated social media posts are among the most effective ways to promote your marketing activations. And is there a better cause than seeing all your audience dress in their special St Patrick’s Day outfit?
3. Throw a St. Patrick’s Day sale
One of the most common ways of promoting St. Patrick’s Day is by offering a special sale for customers. For St. Patrick’s Day sale, you could create a challenge that unlocks a deal or select products you’d like to offer on sale.
One thing to keep in mind is to connect the occasion and the items you’re putting on sale. Instead of offering reduced prices or a free gift, it’s good to have a whole story behind the St. Patrick’s Day offer that will stick with your audience and entice them to buy more.
4. Promote St Patrick’s Day recipes
Just like we all know that beer is a signature drink of St. Patrick’s Day, there are also some recipes that perfectly suit this day. Guinness chocolate cookies, anyone?
Whether you’re creating a social media challenge for your audience to share their recipes or you want to promote recipes of your own, both can be great promotional content.
10 St. Patrick’s Day marketing campaigns that got lucky
Here are the 10 most exciting St. Patrick’s Day marketing campaign examples from some of the biggest brands!
1. Chicago – Green River
We start the list with one of the most iconic St Patrick’s Day scenes from the Chicago celebration. And though coloring the river in the center of Chicago isn’t necessarily any brand’s marketing campaign, this activation brings thousands of tourists annually to come together and watch the river turn bright green.
Source: travelandleasure.com
2. Pandora – Lucky Charm
When you first think of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, it’s more likely you’ll think of a beer brand than jewelry. And, that’s exactly why Pandora and their Lucky Charm made this list.
The brand chose this occasion to release a new pendant in the shape of a four-leaf clover for their customizable bracelets. And in their messaging, they intelligently connected the symbolism behind the lucky charm with the luck St. Patrick is known to bring.
Because who wouldn’t want to have their lucky charm by their side at all times?
Source: facebook.com
3. Guinness – A St. Patrick’s Day Message
Guinness is one of the most famous brands for celebrating St Patrick’s Day with powerful marketing campaigns. The most famous Irish beer brand is everything St. Patrick’s Day is about: a joyous celebration of tradition and coming together.
As a brand that could consider itself the modern-day father of St. Patrick’s Day, they released an important message to all its customers around the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic. The message was about celebrating together while at home and persevering in those hard times before our lives return to normal.
4. GUINNESS – Prepare for St Patrick’s Day, Smiling
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Guinness used St. Patrick’s Day as the occasion for more lighthearted and fun messaging in their commercials. One good example is the “Smiling” ad that was designed to help people prepare for St. Patrick’s Day by learning how to smile.
This funny ad not only brings instant smiles to people’s faces but also reminds them to look forward to the actual day of celebration. All in the great company of Guinness.
5. Cadbury Dairy Milk – Be a Cadbury Dreamer
Cadbury Dairy Milk is an iconic British chocolate bar that’s been around for over 100 years. And every year, Cadbury takes the opportunity to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in their marketing campaigns.
One of their most heartwarming efforts is their “Be a Cadbury Dreamer” campaign, where they encouraged viewers to celebrate their St. Patrick’s Day by making someone else’s a better one.
6. Bailey’s – Kiss me I’m Irish and so is my Bailey’s
Let’s face it, booze brands should always take the opportunity to make exciting marketing initiatives for St. Patrick’s Day. And Bailey’s, an Irish creme liqueur, is a brand that understands its role in this tradition.
Their clever St. Patrick’s Day marketing campaign encouraged fans to upload a photo and brand it with “Kiss me I’m Irish, and so is my Bailey’s” to add a little Irish spirit to their profile pictures. As the cherry on top, participants had an automatic entry to win a “Kiss Me I’m Irish” t-shirt.
Source: matrixinternet.ie
7. McDonald’s – Shamrock Shake
Every year in March, McDonald’s releases its signature green-colored Shamrock Shake to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. And even though the company has been periodically offering this dring for the past 50 years, its popularity grew only a few years ago when Mcdonald’s decided to share the secret ingredient.
They did it by sharing a seemingly nonsensical tweet with the code: “#cbf2ac”, which they later explained was the hex code of the iconic green color of the Shamrock Shake and a secret to its success.
Source: mcdonalds.com
8. Discover Ireland – Go Green
Since this is originally an Irish holiday, it’s no surprise that their tourism board decided to use this occasion for their original promotion. As a part of their St. Patrick’s Day marketing initiatives, the company created a simple-yet-highly-effective social media campaign.
The participants were encouraged to “Go Green” by sharing their “best green” images or videos. By doing so, they collected participants across all demographics, who entered the competition to win six tickets for their annual homecoming event, The Gathering.
Source: speakeasy-news.com
9. Jameson – #CheersYourJameson
Another famous alcohol brand that regularly creates an enjoyable marketing campaign for St. Patrick’s Day is Jameson.
A few years ago, the company created a social media challenge with the hashtag #CheersYourJamseon, encouraging their audience to share pictures of them cheering with their friends.
All participants that used the hashtag automatically entered the competition for a free trip to Dublin for the St. Patrick’s Day celebration. This fun and engaging campaign attracted thousands of participants, which meant great success for the company.
Source: qwerty.bg
10. SEMrush – St. Patrick’s Day
The only software company that made the list is one of the biggest names in content marketing, SEMRush. The company always amazes with its on-point and effective marketing campaigns, and St. Patrick’s Day is one great example.
They created a fun and interactive crossword puzzle game for their St. Patrick’s Day marketing campaign where the lucky winner would get a Guinness gift set.
By creating this themed campaign, SEMRush increased its exposure and engaged their niche audience of marketers.
Source: impactplus.com
What is the value of great St. Patrick’s day marketing ideas?
Besides celebrating Irish culture, dedicated St. Patrick’s Day marketing campaigns can be a great source of topical, creative, and original content for your brand. Instead of creating different promotions and activations completely tied to your brand, consider using this event to spice things up.
Since St. Patrick’s Day is an event known for people coming together and celebrating Irish culture, there is something very human and endearing about leveraging St. Patrick’s Day marketing ideas.
At the end of the day, creating an interactive St. Patrick’s Day marketing campaign will help you increase brand awareness and content with a broader audience.
How to speed up client feedback for St. Patrick’a Day ads
Making sure that everyone respects their deadlines is one of the most important things when working on marketing campaigns for special occasions like St. Patrick’s day. And to make sure you’re collecting all approvals in time, you’ll need a good review and approval tool.
With a client feedback tool like Filestage, you can have your review process basically run itself, waving goodbye to sleepless nights of waiting for someone’s feedback.
Filestage allows teams to share, discuss, and approve all their files, all in one place – including documents, images, videos, websites, and audio files. Plus, all reviewers will get notified whenever there’s a due date approaching, making sure you collect all your approvals in time.
Final thoughts
If you’re already in the St. Patrick’s Day spirit but need a clear idea of how to incorporate those ideas into marketing campaigns, make sure to check this list. Hopefully, it helps you create the luckiest St. Patrick’s Day marketing campaign for you and your audience!
